


Shine

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Beaches, Bioluminescence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Love, Memory, Ocean, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:30:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They make their own light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [professorfangirl (lizeckhart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/gifts).



> I’ve owed [PFG](http://archiveofourown.org/works/587964) a bioluminescent 221B for a very long time. Here it is, with thanks and love.

 

“Dinoflagellates,” Sherlock says. Phytoplankton stirred into luminescent soup by the legs of sanderlings, by their bare feet at the tide line.

“A man died here,” John says, with the reverence he has for such places, for all of them really, for the elegy of the world.

“Yes,” Sherlock says, drops his chin, squeezes John’s shoulder with a cold hand. He’s learned a few things in the last seven years, from being gone from the earth, from coming back into it.

The sea sparks. The dead man despaired and loved his wife and owned a boat and never came back. Not a murder.

“That bit about the bowline,” John says, “that was brilliant.”

“Suicide by drowning,” Sherlock says, “is…”

“Did you ever …” John starts.

Sherlock stoops, hands awash, alight, splashes, stands, reaches to swipe a bright line down John’s cheek.

They glow in the dark.

“Let’s go in,” Sherlock says.

Sherlock’s hair is stiff with salt. John’s shivering. A shower to sluice off the sea.

Pine freshener, wrong for the shore. An old hurricane. The ghost of a smoke.

Sherlock takes John’s hands in the darkness of their room. Pulls him into a narrow bed. Speaks quietly the names of things from the deep.

_Tomopteris,deiopea,abraliopsis._

_Make their own light._

The ocean washes in, lifts from them once more its brightness.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Marine dinoflagellates of the British Isles](http://www.ceh.ac.uk/products/publications/marinedinoflagellatesofthebritishisles.html)   
> [ glowing dinoflagellates](http://www.asknature.org/strategy/d851e35113506bcf0219e973da169c29)   
> [Beautiful bioluminscence, beach, Maldives, from the Daily Mail](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2124432/Glow-flow-Natural-phenomenon-turns-sea-water-electric-neon-blue-washes-beach.html)   
> [tomopteris](http://www.realmonstrosities.com/2012/08/tomopteris.html)   
> [deiopea](http://www.interlog.com/~girbe/deiopea.html)   
> [abraliopsis](http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~biolum/organism/pictures/abraliopsis.html)


End file.
